The present invention relates to the movable contact of a slide switch designed to slidingly moving to connect/disconnect the tip of a contact to/from a fixed contact for switching.
For example, in a lever switch device for a vehicle, a slide switch operated with the operation of an operation lever rotatably provided in two directions crossing each other. The slide switch comprises a plurality of fixed contacts provided on a base and a movable contact in the shape of a flat spring forming a cross that slides on the base with the operation of the operation lever to come into contact with or separate from the fixed contact (for example refer to JP-A-2000-208003). This type of movable contact has contact parts extending in four directions and the switch is turned on or off when the tip of each contact part comes into contact with or separates from the fixed contact.
In this type of slide switch, as a countermeasure against chattering, as shown in FIG. 7, a contact part 2 of a movable contact is split into two pieces by a slit 3 extending in the extension direction of the contact part 2 in order to provide two split contact parts 4. Chattering refers to a phenomenon that the contact part of a movable contact comes into contact with or separates from the fixed contact in a short time due to vibration or the like. For a configuration shown in FIG. 7, the contact part 2 is split into two split contact parts 4, so that simultaneous chattering on the two split contact parts 4 can be prevented as far as possible.
For the above configuration the contact part 2 is split into two pieces; so that each split contact part is not sufficiently strong. When slidingly moving in the direction of an arrow A1 as an arraying direction of the two split contact parts, the tip of the split contact part 4 is likely to trip over a very small difference in level at the boundary of the top surface of the base and the fixed contact thus being deformed.